KTMG Papers: Thirteen

Meeting of May 28, 1930

G. de P. — Will you please come to order. I am now ready to answer questions.

Student — Professor, could you give us a talk from the esoteric standpoint on the matter of overeating, undereating, and unnecessary particularity about the food that is eaten?

G. de P. — The ideal practice is to eat just enough to keep the body healthy and in good running order, and there is nothing so dangerous as eating more than you need. It is fatal. It leads to disease, or brings out latent seeds of disease. Overeating weakens the body, renders it very susceptible to attack by disease; and worst of all, it dulls the mind dreadfully. Overeating produces a vicious circle of consequences. Indeed, the very impulse and desire to overeat is a psychomental sickness.

I want to tell you something about food. It is not eating that makes you strong. It is what you assimilate that gives you strength and keeps you healthy. Eat naturally, eat normally, eat what is set before you, and then forget it. If you do not like it, and there is nothing else, then go without it. A little fasting won't hurt you. Or eat a little of it, and let it go at that. If you feel that you need a little meat, then eat a little meat, but be sure that it is a need, not merely an appetite for flesh. If you can do without meat and eat eggs, so much the better for you. But watch yourself a little.

The ideal thing is to eat just enough to keep you healthy and strong; to think as little as you can about your food and let it go at that; and thus you will give your bodies a ghost of a chance to heal themselves, if you are troubled with any physical ailment. No doctor who ever lived ever healed his patients. It is nature who heals you, and the wisest doctor aids nature and does nothing else.

Now, as regards over-particularity or squeamishness in matters of food: that is a sign of a disease, I think. The person who is really healthy and normal is not over-particular. He does not think so much about his food. Therefore, the result is that he gives his body every chance in the world to keep in health, and to right itself when things temporarily go wrong. He has a natural, not an artificial or a diseased appetite, which always follows overeating. He is not over-particular.

I repeat: you do not gain strength by filling the body to repletion with food. Please take that clearly in your heads. You gain strength from what you can take care of, that is, from what you can assimilate. The body in cases of overeating has to take care of the surplusage, and the body does this as best it can.

Practically every disease that human flesh is afflicted with arises originally out of wrong feeding: I mean that if you could trace the disease back to the original cause, you would discover it in wrong feeding and overfeeding — and wrong feeding usually means overfeeding.

I do not know why the questioner asked me this question, but it is one that I have been thinking a good deal about lately, and I have almost despaired of being able really to help people in the matter of food. Why? Because if there is one thing that makes people irritable and cross, crotchety, and sometimes really unkind, it is to probe them on the matter of their food. Everybody is more or less sick, unwell — diseased more or less. Consequently, everyone has unnatural appetites for food. People think that it is a crime to let them grow weak — as they think they will, if you tell them to cut down the quantity of their food: they usually believe that they are going to die within a month or two or three. Few, I think, realize that a little wholesome dieting would give them renewed health and strength, because it would give the body a chance to right itself. Clean out the organs of the body, and all the rest of the tissues, which can be done in one way by eating very lightly and by drinking a
good deal of water: in this way you will freshen up the blood, cleanse it, purify it. Nature will take care of all these things if you will only start the thing going.

Really the ideal is never to eat until you are actually hungry, and then to eat moderately, and not to eat again until you are hungry and then again eat moderately. But look what people do. They go to the table just exactly in the same way as they go to the office — at certain specified hours by the clock, and then they eat heartily as a rule. Does the body require it? Twice out of thrice, no. And yet if you talk to them, and suggest a change, when they complain of feeling poorly, suggest cutting down the food taken to one meal a day, note the howl of despair and terror that would almost certainly arise. "If I do that I am going to die. I am going to lose my strength. It will kill me." They don't know the real road to health!

Chelas in training never eat more than one meal a day, and a very simple meal at that: usually a few tablespoonfuls of rice, perhaps boiled in milk, no salt, no pepper, perhaps a little dab of butter, and a little fruit, and all the water they want. European chelas, or Chinese, may possibly take a little tea or coffee. No chocolate, however — not that chocolate is bad in itself, but it is a powdered nut that is very rich and nutritious, and to a certain extent it prevents what the chela is aiming for: to make the body as much as is possible transparent to the higher energies, nevertheless keeping it strong and in good health. If you could see one of our chelas you would marvel at him, for you would probably see a picture of health and normal strength.

Overeating is fatal to chelaship. The Zulus have the following proverb: "The gods never visit a man whose belly is constantly full." The meaning is: you will never get inspiration, you will never be able to confabulate with your own inner divinity, if there is a mass of food in your body all the time. The brain thereby is dulled and stupefied, the nerves are poisoned, the body becomes cranky and upset.

On the other hand, do not underfeed, which means perhaps eating not nearly enough to provide the minimum nourishment required. Some Oriental fanatics do this and reduce the amount of food taken into the body to an absurdly small quantity. One who is thus underfed is apt to see illusory visions in the lower regions of the astral light, and he would probably mistake them for beatific visions — which is all nonsense. Eat what you need. Drink plenty of good water. If you like tea or coffee, use them moderately and not over-strong, not so that they drug the system. If you find that you need a little more food than your first attempts show, then eat a little more. If you find that you eat a little more than you actually need, omit a little; but in every case don't think so much about it. Give it a little serious thought, and when you think that you have found the normal for you — and each one differs — then keep to that and forget about it.

Has anyone any other question to ask?

Student — I would like to ask if there is any connection between the luz of the Hebrews and the sushumna-nadi?

G. de P. — The "Luz"-bone is a bone which the Arabs say is the seed of the man when he shall arise when Allah calls him. It is the "seed" of his future being; and the luz-bone, according to most Mohammedan Doctors of theology, is the os coccyx. It is one of the last, or the last, bone of the spinal column. No, I do not think that there is any especial connection between the luz-bone of Mohammedan legend and the sushumna-nadi. The latter is rather a spiritual current, a canal, a channel, in and around the spinal column.

Student — The description that I read, gives it as being in the neck.

G. de P. — Where did you read that?

Student — In an article on the Egyptian mysteries, that word was given as showing the ansated symbol that they use, and it gave it at the neck.

G. de P. — I believe that some Mohammedan doctors do place it as one of the cervical vertebrae, but the majority, I think, incline to believe in the sayings of Mohammed about the luz-bone, which is to be the seed of the body of the future man, and that it is the os coccyx. They really don't seem to know themselves. At any rate, the matter is of no importance.

Student — You told us some time ago quite a good deal about thoughts, but I would like to ask you how it is that we can have a melody running in the mind, a melody that we pick up from someone else. Sometimes a melody will persist in the mind, and it is actually a melody that we hear inside.

G. de P. — Well, what is the question?

Student — What is going on in the mind? Is the melody actually a thought that you are thinking?

G. de P. — What do you think goes on in the mind when you are studying some mathematical problem?

Student — Well, you are concentrated on the problem in hand.

G. de P. — Yes. Your question then is: "What is happening in the mind when music is heard?" Is that the idea?

Student — Yes, it is. Suppose that you have heard a melody and it repeats itself over and over in your mind during the day. You almost grow tired of it.

G. de P. — I see. What you speak of is a reflex action, as modern scientists would say, due to the state of the nerves which have received a strong impression. The musical melody has made a strong impression upon the brain, which automatically repeats and reproduces the melody.

Some musicians, the so-called creators of beautiful musical productions, receive definite musical inspiration from the higher spiritual part of their being. It really is a light, which takes the form of music. This light is transmuted in their consciousness into inner sound, which is heard by the inner ear, because light and sound are but two phases of the gamut of vibrations, two different ranges. Do you understand me?

Student — Yes, Professor.

Student — May I ask a question regarding what you have just said? Why is it that some composers have such different methods of composition? For instance, Schubert was simply so inspired that the music seemed to flow through him almost without thought. He would be sitting at a restaurant table, and suddenly say: "Such a beautiful melody has come to me." And he would write it down just as it came, and the next day he would forget all about it. Whereas Beethoven would hear melodies and work them out, and revise them and change them until they were what he wanted them. Why is it that great musicians should receive their inspirations and work them out in these different ways?

G. de P. — I think that the fact you speak of is due solely to differences of temperament and character. You might ask an equivalent question with regard to wonderful literature. Why should some authors see the same thing in different ways, or produce such different things, all however things of beauty? It is ascribable to differences of character, of temperament, and to the different stages that they hold along the evolutionary pathway. I do not think that there is any other reason.

Student — In an article of yours in The Theosophical Path, September 1929, the discussion of the Weissmann cell was spoken of and what it lacked was supplied by you according to the esoteric doctrine. But that part is not what I want to know something about. I am rather submitting this interpretation for your correction. It spoke of the immortality of the germ-cell, and that it descended from remote ancestors and was passed on to successive generations unutilized, and this germ-plasm never changed, and was not used for the building up of the body either of the parent or of the offspring to be.

Now for a long while I have thought about that, and I could not imagine what the function of this latent parent germ-plasm could be, and yet, according to theory, it was passed on through the ages. And finally it came to my mind — probably I heard it, I don't know — but lately I have just thought that its function was to preserve the characteristics of the human type for the reincarnating entity. And this accounts for the one type of the human race. That is, all through the five races, the human type is the same. I do not know whether that is correct or not; but that is one part of the question that is in my mind. What is the function of this immortal germ-plasm?

G. de P. — You have asked a very interesting question, and your answer is in the question itself, as far as it goes; but it does not go far, not far enough. The germ-plasm is really the concreted deposit or concretion of the astral fluid, which is but an other way of saying a deposit arising originally in the monadic essence and flowing to and through the various vehicles, concreting more and more as it goes earthwards and finally reaching its last stage in the germ-plasm of the physical man. This germ-plasm is passed on untouched from parent to child, and is, just as you say, the human background of the physiological processes — well, perhaps physiological is not the proper word — but at any rate the human-astral-physical background towards which, and into which, the life-atom of the reincarnating ego is drawn and falls. By so doing, by entering that, it starts a prepared and ready life-atom into beginning the growth of an individual physical vehicle. Do you
understand me?

Student — Yes. But this germ-plasm, I thought, was different from the dhyan-chohanic astral fluid, because that astral fluid or those astral forces were mixing with the vitalities, that is the activities and potentialities of the soul, and that fluid was helping to build up the body; whereas that latent germ-plasm had nothing to do whatever. It was unutilized; it was a latent germ just passed on. Therefore the question came into my mind: what really is its function?

G. de P. — That is correct. Its function is to preserve the human type from age to age, and therefore it itself slowly changes. Atoms of it in each generation are utilized to prepare and to make the beginnings of the children then born.

In each generation there is an added concretion from within to replace that portion devoted to make the growing cells of the body to be. In other words, a certain part of the germ-plasm is used for the growing germ-cell. In that germ-cell is always latent a certain unused part of the same parental germ-plasm passed from parents to child, and when that child grows to maturity, is prepared, or physiologically is able, to procreate, a certain portion of that passed-on parental germ-plasm is utilized to prepare, to make, and to begin, the body of the next generation.

But in all cases the germ-plasm, the germinal fluid, the germ-fluid, whether utilized or passed on, is the concreted deposit of the astral fluid of what you call the dhyan-chohan, which is but another way of saying the reincarnating ego.

Student — Thank you. May I ask you one more question?

G. de P. — Yes; but first let me add that our physical bodies are not different either in substance or in type from the astral linga-sarira, but each body is merely a concretion of the linga-sarira. In other words, a certain part of the linga-sarira thickens, grossens, coarsens, materializes, and becomes the physical body.

Now, Doctor, ask your other question.

Student — There were detached cells, I think, that did not come under that human dominant influence in this germ-plasm, and they furnish or produce the stocks of the beast world. Now these detached cells have not that germ-plasm, therefore the animal body of the beast world, of course, could not be human. Is that it?

G. de P. — No, that is not it. The body of the beasts contains the same germ-plasm that the human body contains; but it is not fit, not ripe, not evolutionally ripe, to produce human beings. The same fact exists in all Nature, as is shown in chemistry. The atoms of chemistry are the same in a tree or in an ox, or in an elephant or in a stone, as in the human physical body. But in one case these atoms are concreted to enshrine a certain vital energy or urge which is a tree; in another case, an ox; in another case, an elephant; in another case a man. But the elements are the same in all cases. Exactly the same plasm exists fundamentally in the beasts as exists in the human body, otherwise there would be no possible chance for the beasts gradually to refine themselves as the long ages pass, and grow more humanlike. This most emphatically is not Darwinism. Darwin, however, was not wholly wrong in some of his profounder views.

Student — When we set a cord in as rapid vibration as it is possible for us to do, it appears still. And I wondered when the vibration of light is increased beyond light so that it becomes what HPB calls the mineral kingdom — where she speaks of the mineral kingdom as being light immetalized, on the idea that the rapidity of vibration is so great that it is apparently still — I do not know whether I am clear or not.

G. de P. — I think I understand. Now just frame your question again in a few words.

Student — When HPB speaks of the mineral kingdom as being light immetalized, is it because light increases its vibration so rapidly that it becomes what we think of as still?

G. de P. — That is correct. Actually the rate of vibration in a stone is more rapid than it is in what the physicist calls light. It is rapidity of vibration which coarsens, grossens, and concretes the fundamental substance of the universe; and that means also that the vibrations becoming so much more rapid become smaller.

Instead of the swing of the pendulum being from sun to planet or from star to star, the magnitude — or what is the term they use? — the amplitude grows smaller and smaller, and at the same time more rapid, all the time. And when in our own hierarchy it reaches its utmost possible rate, its highest rate of vibration in rapidity, you have the mineral kingdom.

Student — May I finish with another question about it? In a recent article by a chemist, the statement was made that the rapidity of vibration in the atom approached the confines of the vibration of light, but if that is accurate, is that then why the atom is the sheath of the monad and really belongs to the mineral kingdom?

G. de P. — No, that happens because the atom when it produces a light ray is in a state of disintegration or explosion. Do you understand me?

Student — I see.

G. de P. — And this means that the rate of vibration, due to some cause or other, whatever it may be, is rapidly and suddenly slowed down, so that an electron, or more than one of the electrons, or a portion of the electron, in the atom probably leaves the atom in an explosion so to say — disappears in a burst of light.

I might call your attention, Companions, in passing, to the fact that following the law of universal and analogical similarity in nature's operations, this same thing sometimes happens to and in the planets circling around the sun. The reverse also takes place: just as an atom will capture another electron when it is electron hungry, and thus change its polarity, so can a solar system, our own, for instance, capture a wandering cosmic body. When that body is so captured, it changes the polarity of the solar system. Neptune is such a case, and Uranus also is such a case.

Concerning this new planet 'X' I have not been able to get facts enough about it yet properly to answer any questions about it. My feeling is that it also is a capture, from the few items or bits of news I have read about it. This planet 'X' is not counted in the esoteric astrology at all — at any rate I have seen no mention made of it.

Student — I am very much interested lately by these new discoveries of early men in China. The ethnologists and anthropologists are more excited over them than anything they have found for twenty or thirty years. And I have puzzled over something HPB said in The Secret Doctrine: that man two million years ago was much more primitive and animal-like in structure than now. Of course the Atlanteans and Lemurians were long before that; but she says that most definitely, and the ethnologists think that these men they have discovered lately are about a million years old. Most of them do. Some think five hundred thousand, and some a million. And I was wondering whether those ancient men are very much older than they are, and whether they are what the scientists think they are, really primitive. They claim they are of the early Pleistocene — it may be much earlier. Of course they have no way to date those things. I would like to know anything you can tell us on that
subject. It is so important in many ways.

G. de P. — Yes it is. My own impression is this: because cremation was almost universally practised by all civilized peoples and by most barbarian people up till a few tens of thousands of years ago, practically all the human relics that are found by our delving and digging explorers belong to savage tribes who buried their dead, or to savages who lost their lives in battle or by hunting wild beasts, or to those who died from some sudden sickness while on a journey, or something like that.

I do not think that these ancient men whose remains have been discovered are very primitive. I think rather strongly to the contrary, from the few facts and data that I have been able to gather. The same thing happens today. We have savages living among us in various parts of the world. Their bodies are not cared for as civilized men care for the bodies of their dead as a rule. They are drowned, or overwhelmed in some disaster, or slain by beasts and forgotten. Ages hence, their remains may be digged up by some future explorer, who will ponder and wonder whether they belong to "primitive man" or not.

I want to say something, however, with regard to HPB's statement that our present Aryan race is about a million years old. Please do not let that statement, true as it is, mislead you, on account of your own minds misconstruing her statement. It is true that our own present fifth or so-called Aryan race, as a race of its own type, and utterly separate in type, from other races, is about a million years old. But actually as a race it is much older than that. It is some four or five millions of years old, counting from its beginnings.

At about the time of the Miocene period, we were, that is our ancestors were, savages and barbarians in the ages when the Atlanteans had reached the culmination of their glorious civilization, however material it may have been — and it certainly was grossly materialistic in type. Slowly, as the Atlanteans degenerated, this group, our fifth race ancestors, gradually through the ages became more and more refined, also more productive of offspring, and thus grew and spread over the earth, until one day it found itself in the majority. From that time really begins the beginning of the present fifth root-race.

But many ages still passed before it became a race wholly distinct from the preceding Atlantean race; and about one million years ago, at just about that period of time in the past — it reached a point in its evolution, in its progress, where it became indeed a race sui generis. Our race, our present fifth or Aryan race, will live for some four, possibly four and a half, million years more before it shall have died out. The sixth root-race is even at the present time in seeding. The seeds of it are just beginning to show themselves, just beginning to start growth; and that beginning, that starting, and the seeding country, the seeding continent — well, what is the term that the gardeners use when they plant seeds in a place? — the nursery, is the present American continents. But the Americans of that far distant time will have vanished under the waters of the ocean, not in entirety, but most of them, before the sixth root-race in its turn shall have become a race with its own
type and character. That event will happen some five million years hence. There is, therefore, you see, plenty of time for our present race to continue and complete its evolution.

Student — Talking about races has given me an opening to ask for some more definite knowledge on a subject which I have thought a very great deal about.

All of us, or most of us, have met, generally while traveling, or we know something about that class of humanity that is called sometimes hermaphrodite, sometimes androgynous, perhaps very usually bisexual. It has also become quite an educational problem. First, is the influence of such a type of person not almost invariably an evil one? We all know some, or know of them anyway. But given right conditions of education and very particular training, must they inevitably have evil influences?

G. de P. — Well, they are abnormalities at the present time. And being abnormal, being out of time, their influence is not good. That is quite clear. In a certain sense they are unfortunate. They are not only born far later than the time of the race when the androgynous state was the normal state, but they are also far ahead of the time when the race will become androgynous. Hence in a sense they are individuals to be pitied.

Now I know that some physicians, some anthropologists, some scientists, say that real hermaphroditism does not exist; but I doubt it. I doubt the statement. Certainly, mental hermaphroditism is becoming fairly common, and that simply prognosticates what will take place in the physical body in due course of time in the future.

I am sorry to say that I am afraid their influence is not a good one, for the simple reason that the people of our own fifth race are still carrying a heavy load of Atlantean sexual karma. We are still under the sway of the influence of sex; and the less people think about it the better. When you see these mental hermaphrodites, or what are commonly called degenerates — and they are often degenerate in a certain sense — their action on our own feeble minds and weak ethical sense produces an action of which the influence is not good. You understand me, of course.

Student — Quite, Professor. And the second part of the question I think you have answered. I was going to ask whether they were the prelude of the future race which you have pictured to us?

G. de P. — Yes; but that androgynous race of the future will last a very short time; will last a much shorter time than the androgynous races of the third root-race. Then nature was molding things, building, preparing. The future race will come, abide a short time, and pass relatively quickly away. Humanity will be ever more and more tending to become utterly sexless. What a beautiful hope to carry in mind!

Student — Thank you, Professor.

Student — Reading an article in The Theosophical Path not so long ago, speaking about the Valley of the Kings in the Nile region in Egypt, I was thinking of those great chambers that were engineered and constructed, and that the different kings must have been advised by initiates as to how long those chambers would endure. I was wondering if it was proper for these places, that are sacred in a way, to be opened up — even for investigation. For they are sealed there for a purpose. I would like you to give a little light on that please.

G. de P. — Yes. Then you don't like the idea of the tombs being violated, I suppose?

Student — Well, it does not seem exactly right.

G. de P. — I think your instinct is sound, dear Brother. I have the same feeling. It is all very well to talk about exploration in the interests of science, and there is a good deal to say for that I will admit; but we all know what we think of human beings, ghouls, of the present day who violate graveyards. There is something horrible about it. I do not like the idea myself.

Perhaps the mere entering of these ancient tombs is all right. It might be all right just to explore them, and if they were carefully sealed up again and left in peace I would not have anything especial to say. But to enter them and to violate the sanctity of the dead — there is something repulsive to me about it, especially when the things found are afterwards scattered over the face of the earth and the mummies put into glass cases and stared at by hordes of curious people. It does not seem right.

I know the Valley and the Tombs of the Kings well. When I was there with our beloved KT in 1903 or 1904, I think it was, we entered quite a few of these beautiful and solemn places, beautiful and solemn in the sense of the majestic peace that still prevails. I remember that we entered one tomb, descending along the corridor cut in the living rock. We walked on and on, descended a few steps, then walked on. Electric lights were strung along the corridor.

Finally we came to the chamber and there in a sunken rectangular cavity, cut out of the solid rock, we saw the sarcophagus of one of Egypt's greatest kings. The explorers had taken off the top of the sarcophagus and had put a high-powered electric bulb just above the coffin, the sarcophagus. The light was strong, and you stood leaning over a modern railing and looked down at this famous king's dead body, lying there with the garish light beating upon it.

I did not like it at all. It seemed wrong to me. But there was nothing that we could do about it. I detest the lack of reverence that so many of our explorers have for the rights of the dead, for the rights and the feelings of the by-gone peoples, who were we ourselves, if you please.

Student — May not the feeling that a good many people have, that after they have been cremated their ashes shall be scattered in nature, so as to avoid anything like that happening in the future, be based on that same feeling that you have expressed?

G. de P. — I think so. And outside of that, it is a great help to the excarnating entity to have its decomposing physical body dissipated into its component atoms. Cremation is a help: it is a quick freeing of otherwise very strongly magnetic attractions to the living body that was. You see, the excarnating entity for a short time after death is almost physical, and all the lower part of the intermediate constitution still is in the atmosphere of the earth. It is true that the spirit has already joined its parent-sun. It is true that the reincarnating ego is very soon to be withdrawn into the bosom of the parent-monad. But the lower intermediate part, the human soul part, still is in the atmosphere of the earth, joined to the kama-rupa; and if the physical body is allowed to decay, or if it is mummified as the Egyptians did it, there is a strong psychomagnetic attraction to that dead body.

It was part of the being you know, part of its life, a deposit of its own essence; and, as I tell you, the attraction is tremendous. Therefore cremation, outside of what you have pointed out, has the added advantage of more quickly freeing the excarnating entity from earthly attractions.

Student — Does the place where the ashes are buried or scattered have any consequence whatever?

G. de P. — None at all. None at all.

Student — In the case of the disintegration of a black magician, when the last thing has happened, and the life-atoms are set free, I would like to know whether these life-atoms, which of course will have begun their upward march, will continue once again. Will they not?

G. de P. — Yes.

Student — Have they any bent one way or the other on account of the experience through which they have passed?

G. de P. — Yes, a very strong one, a very strong one indeed. But please remember that there is nothing unjust about this, because the life-atoms that have been attracted to a Brother of the Shadow that was, are of a very gross type, not necessarily gross in the sense of being very material, but psychically gross, if you understand me.

Student — Yes, thank you.

Student — I wondered why it was that the Egyptians who had such a wonderful civilization, and must have been rather spiritual, embalmed their dead if it was such a bad practice, and thus delayed the separation of the soul from the physical world.

G. de P. — I am very glad that you asked that question, because that very fact passed through my mind when I spoke a moment agone, and I then thought that it would be a good question for someone to ask. Please remember that the Egyptians of history were a very devout and a quasi-mystical people, but nevertheless they were not a highly spiritual one. They were a mixture of late Atlanteans and immigrants from the Orient. Not only the Egyptian architecture, but the Egyptian religion as a whole and many of the Egyptian customs were hang-overs, relics, of Atlantean culture; and mummification of the dead among the late Atlanteans was widely and extensively practised.

The original Egyptians actually came from the Atlantic islands that Plato in his Critias called Atlantis, and which was also called by some of the ancient Greeks Poseidonis, the name of the largest of these lost islands of the Atlantean continent. Poseidonis was the last island-remnant of one of the continents of the Atlantic system, and this island disappeared some 12,000 years ago. But of course Egypt, the northern part of Africa, which had been slowly emerging from the ocean bed, and also slowly built up through the ages by deposits from the Nile, had been settled by Atlantean immigrants for ages preceding the time of the submergence of the island of Poseidonis. In addition to this, during the course of the last two or three decades of millennia, it had also received large numbers of immigrants from what is now southern India, and lands once adjoining Southern India but now submerged. The Egyptians, therefore, of history, were a people of mixed Atlantean and Aryan race.

Student — HPB says that the Egyptians came from India. Does that mean another set of Egyptians?

G. de P. — No, as I have just said the Egyptians of history were a mixture of Atlantean immigrants who had settled ages previously in Egypt, and of later people who came from the Orient, from southern India and from now vanished lands then adjoining southern India and Ceylon. The two peoples combined and formed the Egyptians of history.

Student — And were the ancient Egyptians, those that were there previously, superior to the Egyptians of history?

G. de P. — Well, they were late Atlanteans who had immigrated to the rising lands of the Egyptian delta.

Student — I mean the very ones that settled in Egypt before those whom you speak of, the historical Egyptians. I had the idea they were a purer type of Egyptians than the others.

G. de P. — No, I doubt that. I believe even to the contrary. I think that I have already pointed out in answering a previous question that Egypt was first settled by Atlantean immigrants who colonized Northern Africa. These Atlantean immigrants settled on land formed by the deposits of the river Nile, and this land later became the delta of Egypt. At a much later time in history, possibly some twenty thousand or fifteen thousand or twelve thousand years ago, other immigrants came into Egypt from the Orient, from the districts where now southern India is, and these later immigrants, intermarrying with the Atlantean Egyptian stock already resident there, produced the Egyptians of history, the historic Egyptians. Do you understand now?

Student — Yes, thank you. I didn't know whether it was a purer kind of Atlanteans who went there in the beginning, or a bad kind. That was my difficulty.

G. de P. — They were not of the most spiritual kind.

Student — I would like to ask: would it seem possible for there to be a very widespread religion whose adherents are devoted and mystical, but not essentially spiritual? And I have wondered if this is the case with the Mohammedans.

G. de P. — Very true, but on a lower plane even than were the Egyptians of history. You are quite right in your idea. Without any wish to offend the feelings of the adherents of Islam, the Mohammedans, and recognizing also that there is much truth and beautiful mystical thought in certain aspects of the later Mohammedanism, nevertheless I feel it my duty to observe that Mohammedanism, taking it by and large, has produced in its adherents a very devout, sometimes mystical, but, on the whole, an unspiritual people.

Student — May I ask you to tell us something about the Mayas of Central America? Who were they?

G. de P. — They were Atlantean stocks which, like so many others when Atlantis began to sink, foresaw what was coming. They had a great deal of magical knowledge at that time. They left their native lands and migrated to the Americas at different times through later ages, and settled the new lands which were rising on east and west and south. These new lands became the Americas, became Africa, became parts of Asia; and the present European countries, stretching from the Ural mountains of Russia, westward to include the British Isles, and even farther westward than that in former times. All these Atlanteans who emigrated from their own greatest continent, slowly settled through the ages upon these new lands, and in time lost almost all recollection of their own homeland and became the stocks of the ancient Americans, such as the Mayas, the Incas of Peru, and also the archaic Egyptians, and again the very earliest Aryans, and so forth.

Student — I was just going to ask about Mexico. It was just the same with regard to Mexico, wasn't it?

G. de P. — Yes, just the same.

Student — Where do the Basques come in?

G. de P. — The Basques are also of just the same origin as the other peoples — Atlantean remnants, but dwindled to be very few in number at the present time. I believe that the language and many of the customs of the Basques have a very close relation to the language and customs of the Guanches of the Canary Islands.

Student — You said that the Atlanteans were very materially inclined and left a stamp on the Egyptians and probably on these other later peoples. But were there not some among them, very highly evolved people, who must have settled somewhere in the world and had not that material stamp?

G. de P. — Certainly there were. When a race is spoken of as being grossly material in tendency, that doesn't mean that every individual of the race was such. As a matter of fact, the Atlanteans produced some magnificent initiates of the right-hand path, wonderfully spiritual. Furthermore, it was in or out of the bosom of the Atlanteans that grew our own more spiritual fifth root-race. Bad as we are, we are not as bad as the bulk of the Atlanteans were at the time when nature could tolerate them no more and tolerate is not a merely poetic phrase.

The psychic vibrations of the continents of Atlantis, or rather of the people who dwelt upon those continents, grew so powerful and so penetrating and so disintegrative that this more than anything else helped to bring about nature's reaction in the form of geological catastrophes. I mean here not merely a reaction among humans, but a reaction of nature herself.

Let me remind you that the Atlanteans were, as a race, very magical. They had many more powers than we have and they used them badly. A man at the present day, one of our fifth root-race men, can do little more than destroy his own health and his own body by his evil practices, and thus ruin his soul if he goes far enough, and also act to disintegrate the physical and psychical principles of his fellows. His influence on physical matter is relatively small because we are slowly drawing away from physical things, the distance between us as a race and grossly physical matter is very slowly increasing.

But among the Atlanteans, with their enormous bodies, their tremendous wills, and with their magical practices based on magical knowledge of nature's laws and operations, this combination of factors was, spiritually and ethically speaking, an extremely powerful and bad one. The bodies of the Atlanteans were much grosser than ours, heavier, I mean, pound for pound. A pound of Atlantean flesh was heavier than a pound of human flesh today. Everything was coarser, heavier, grosser, more material, but all this does not mean that the Atlanteans were men of striking ugliness. On the contrary many of them were men and women of remarkable but evil beauty. The same condition prevails even among us today. There is such a thing as evil beauty today, both in men and in women; human beings who impress one unpleasantly when one sees them, although they may be very handsome — and the Atlanteans were just so.

Student — I have been wondering if there is any special significance in the fact that the name Atlantis is the genitive form of the name Atlas. Of course there are the Atlas Mountains in the north of Africa. Can you tell us?

G. de P. — I do not think that there is any particular significance in that. Atlantean of course comes from the Greek term Atlantis which was the term that the Greek Plato used. It was certainly connected with the mountain range called Atlas — probably the name Atlantis originated in the name Atlas; and Mt. Atlas, by the way, was one of the Atlantean mountain chains which has now dwindled to the small range in North Africa.

It is curious how beautiful, how strikingly beautiful, these remnants of the Atlantean continent still are. I have traveled a great deal in my life, but I do not know anything so naturally beautiful in wondrous colorings and in strange and mystical outlines as are the Madeira Islands for instance. They often have an appearance of being fairylike, and I remember when KT and I reached Funchal, Madeira, it was at night. The ship slowed down speed and went very slowly — there is a series of small islands there — into the open roadstead. There is no real port. The very atmosphere was vibrating with an unworldly feeling, a weird feeling. It struck us both forcibly. In the morning when the sun came up, those wonderful blue hills, tree-covered, and the stretch of white sand, and the peaked islands out at sea around us, were most impressive. I do not think that I have ever seen anything just like it elsewhere.

Do not make the mistake of thinking that the Atlanteans were an ugly people or that they were all black magicians, or that they were uncivilized. On the contrary, their culmination of civilization reached a height and splendor which we have not yet attained. In some respects they were far wiser than we are today. They were very advanced in their cyclical evolution, but nevertheless they were on the whole unspiritual. They were gross in matter, with strong material instincts; and every Atlantean was a natural magician born, and usually a black magician born. The good and wise ones among them fought these tendencies and strived against them, and these wise ones were the bearers of light — the white magicians of those days.

Student — May not a good many of the best Indians and those in Mexico be then a sort of mixture between the Atlanteans and possibly Indians who originally came from Asia or somewhere else?

G. de P. — Yes, and there is a strong negroid mixture in Mexico at the present time. Mexico is one of the few countries which has absorbed the negro-element, an element imported into Mexico by the Spanish conquistadores. You all know, I suppose, somewhat of the history of the importation of the negro slaves into the New World, originating in the Friar Bartolome de Las Casas, as an act of mercy and compassion for the Indians who were dying in hordes under the hard work, the semi-slavery, to which they were unaccustomed, and under which they were forced to live by the well-meaning, but unwise, Spanish conquerors. The negroes according to the Christian idea were the sons of Ham, and therefore born to labor; and so this kindly-hearted missionary, Las Casas, conceived the idea of saving the Indians from extermination by importing the negroes to take their place as laborers. Mexico has practically absorbed its negro element by intermarriage and Brazil is in a fair way to do the same
thing.

In speaking of the Negroes, I might remind you that they have a destiny before them — a destiny in civilization and power, but when that future period comes, they will no longer be Negroes. They will have intermarried with whites, with the yellow-skinned men, and with the brown-skinned men, so that the present negro elements will have largely disappeared; but the racial urge, the stock, the main stock, will be negroid. Then their time of influence and civilization and power will pass. But before this they will produce their own civilization.

Let me remind you that we pink-skinned men, we who call ourselves the white race, were once considered as barbarians and savages, as horrible, ungainly creatures, by the civilized late Atlantean races who preceded us.

Even in Atlantean days our racial seeds, our forefathers, who were the seeds of the present race, were contemned, scorned, looked upon as outlandish, and as unpleasant creatures. Yet with the remnants of the Atlanteans, such as the Chinese and the tribes of the southeast of Asia, and the American Indians, it is the pink race today and their congeners of India who really are the present masters of the globe. But our time of power and influence will pass, and we shall be succeeded by others.

Student — Is it wrong at the present moment still to discourage the intermarriage or mixture of the black and white races?

G. de P. — The miscegenation of races, you mean? In many countries it is forbidden by law. In this State, I believe, it is against the law for the so-called white race to intermarry with Asiatics. I am not sure of this fact, but at least I know that in some States the miscegenation of races is against the law.

Now is it right to say that these various races should not intermarry? I have often pondered over that question, and I hesitate to give an answer, because I shall almost certainly be misunderstood; but I shall tell you what is happening just the same, whether we like it or not. Miscegenation is proceeding constantly, and there is more mixed blood of the Negro and of the so-called 'white' people in the United States today than the average man or woman has any realization of. Miscegenation is actually going on. Nature evidently is preparing the race to come. When you realize that most of South America and many of the West Indian Islands contain these mixed races, when you realize that the Asiatics are also mixing rapidly, when you realize that importations into European and North American countries of these outlanders and mixed races of alien stock are going on steadily, and that they are finding a home here and slowly mixing their blood with the so-called 'white' man's blood, you can easily see in which
direction the finger of racial destiny is pointing.

In Brazil, for instance, when I was down there I had many interesting conversations with intelligent Brazilians of various shades of color: with the so-called pure white Portuguese, also with the mestizos as they call them, who are mixed, the mulattos, and with representatives of all the other various kinds of racial mixtures, and they all agreed on one thing, and often spoke of what they called the political mistakes of the North Americans, and by this phrase they meant the people of the United States in particular. They all told me in substance: "You are very unwise, you people of the North: you are opposing nature's law. Miscegenation is coming despite you. We here in Brazil, by our laws, favor miscegenation which will produce in the end a stronger and more intelligent stock, for the mixing of stocks always produces sturdiness."

That was their argument, and in fact they were practising what they said. I attended a session of the Congress of one of the Brazilian states, and it was exceedingly interesting to me. There were negroes, there were white men, there were various shades of tan and yellow and black, and Indian, and pink, and all mixed on a footing of perfect equality, as far as I could see.

In answering your question very briefly, I can say simply this, that the time has not come when I would willingly suggest intermarriage; but I am in honesty bound to qualify that by saying that the race of the future will be a composite, composed of the many different races on earth today. Let us also remember that all men are ultimately of one blood.

Student — Since we have had all these new teachings during the last year, the book of devotion, The Voice of the Silence, has appealed to me very strongly. There is one passage I should like to quote and then ask two questions:

"Let not thy 'Heaven-born' merged in the sea of Maya, break from the Universal Parent (SOUL), but let the fiery power retire into the inmost chamber, the chamber of the Heart. . . .

"Then from the heart that Power shall rise into the sixth, the middle region, the place between thine eyes, when it becomes the breath of the ONE-SOUL, the voice which filleth all, thy Master's voice."

There are two points I don't quite understand. I should like to have some explanation of the part that says: "Let the fiery power," which refers to kundalini as the explanation is given in the footnote, "retire into thy heart." Then the passage speaks of the power rising again into the middle region placed "between thine eyes." Can you give further explanation?

G. de P. — There is a more spiritual interpretation than the mere verbal one, but I will keep to the verbal one. Kundalini penetrates every atom of the body, but it is likewise more particularly located in its channel running up and down the spinal column; nevertheless it reigns everywhere. Localizing it in the heart means not so much the physical organ, but in the center of the human consciousness which the ancients always placed in the region of the heart. The human consciousness I mean, not the spiritual, and from that the power rises into the akasic region of the brain, into the temple or chamber of the brain, which in the phrase you quote is localized between the eyes. Do you understand me?

Student — Yes, but is there a spiritual meaning behind it?

G. de P. — Oh yes. The spiritual meaning is the rising of the human into becoming quasi-divine, and that is the way of the Masters. The Master's consciousness, a mahatma's consciousness, rises out of the heart, out of the merely human into the akasa which fills the brain-substance and hollows, and there it works upon two glands in particular: the pineal gland and the pituitary. The one the organ of impersonal and therefore of personal will; the other, the pineal gland, is the organ of spiritual vision.

I can tell you more. By his will the mahatma can set up a vibration in the pineal gland, which is the organ of the higher nature in the body, and so stimulate it, so to speak, that vision almost of infinity ensues. Do you understand what I am trying to say?

Student — Yes, Professor.

G. de P. — Now, what is your next question? Or have you asked them both?

Student — You have answered them both. They have been included in your answer.

Student — The time is coming when it will be the anniversary, one might say, of our heart's opening to this wonderful new time, and I was wondering if in a very particular sense at the time of that anniversary, a still greater door would not open to us if we are ready for it? Have we not also a serious responsibility, perhaps, in making this so?

G. de P. — It is quite true. Everything in nature moves in cycles, and one of the most familiar and also one of the most important, is the cycle of the year. The passing of our beloved KT took place close, as you will remember, to the time of the summer solstice. And those of you who are ready, Companions, when the summer solstice now close upon us, comes again, can take a great forward step. It depends upon you, upon the impulses in your heart, upon the strength of your will. Make the call, and it will be answered.

I want to say this, Companions, before we close: that I am very happy to be with you, to do what I can to help you. I feel that a large part of the work which I was sent to do is in accomplishment here in these meetings. You are all true comrades, loyal, sincere, true, aspiring, and I am very happy to be with you.

I only hope, and I think that it will be so, that when my time comes to go, or when I am called, you will be as faithful and true to the one who will follow me as you have been to Katherine Tingley and to me.